This is the common refrain among Kenyan voters who, haunted by post-election riots five years ago that killed more than 1,200, head to the polls Monday to choose a new president.

Both optimism and fear can be felt on the streets and inside the shacks of Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, where some of the worst 2007 violence took place.

Jane Wanjiru, a 74-year-old shop owner, isn’t taking any chances. She left Kibera with her 4-year-old granddaughter Nyakio to live with relatives closer to Nairobi’s city centre. Nyakio was orphaned five years ago when her parents — Wanjiru’s son and his wife — were killed by roving gangs in post-election violence as they tried to return home.

The Wanjirus are Kikuyu, the tribe of presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta. Kenyatta faces charges before the International Criminal Courts for crimes against humanity; he’s accused of exploiting tribal divisions and allegedly bankrolling death squads in the last election to kill members of the Luo tribe.

The population in Kibera is mainly Luo, and Kikuyu property owners were targeted in the aftermath of what was considered a rigged election. Wanjiru said she was robbed and her home burned down. “Before they took my money they said, ‘The Kikuyus have stolen the vote from us. How will you protect yourself?’ ” she told the Star Saturday before heading to her relatives’ place.

Adding to the tension was a warning Sunday night that impostors plan to pose as uniformed police officers and attack voters in Kibera intent on stoking violence.

Yet optimism is evident in the peace graffiti and the voices on the airwaves. None are louder than Pamoja FM, a small Kibera radio station. “Pamoja” means “together.”

Omamo lives with her 12-year-old daughter behind her chapati shop, which was destroyed during the last election. “We belong to one people and we don’t want political violence again. We don’t want tribalism again. Whoever wins the race, let him be the president and we should support him.”

Bwire, 30, moved here six years ago to live with his uncle while he studied journalism at a private university. At first the culture shock was intense. “I’d never even seen a slum before. I was traumatized.” But once he “learned the system,” he grew to love his new home and wanted to report from here.

“How are you? How are you? How are you?” children chanted in English throughout the day as we passed. “Ah,” says Bwire with a laugh, “the white person national anthem.”

Bwire plans to broadcast messages by Omamo and others Monday while the station’s reporting team covers the vast neighbourhood, which stretches about 2.5 kilometres and is home to nearly a million people.

Pamoja FM had only been in operation for three months before the Dec. 27, 2007 election. “We did not expect (the fighting). It was chaotic and at some point it turned into a tribal war,” Bwire recalled. “They were punishing all the Kikuyus who lived in the area. They would steal from them. They used to call it ‘shopping,’ and would go into their houses and take everything and leave an empty room.”

One day a mob came to the entrance of the station’s Kikuyu-owned building and tried to burn it down. Bwire, along with the station’s owner, negotiated with them. They argued that such destruction would only silence the community’s voice. Along with the news reports and BBC dispatches, Pamoja FM airs a steady stream of local musicians, public service announcements and Kibera “success stories.”

Their argument swayed the mob and the building was spared. The station was later credited for helping restore calm by inviting the area’s gang leaders to come on air to end the fighting.

Kibera, about seven kilometres from the city centre, thrives quite literally in the shadow of Nairobi’s wealth.

Children splash in the raw sewage that runs between the shacks or sort through the garbage, which is everywhere, for things to sell. Yet fewer than 200 metres past the two giant billboards — for liquid detergent and strawberry-flavoured condoms — that unofficially mark one of Kibera’s entrances sits former president Daniel Arap Moi’s home in a walled compound, next to pricey apartment complexes and the residences of the French and Sudanese ambassadors.

Anger about the disparity between the haves and have-nots, along with the exploitation of ethnicities in the last election, was partly what fuelled the two months of violence in 2007 and 2008.

Security near Kibera was beefed up this weekend, and plain-clothed security officers walk the streets. Car dealership lots along Ngong Rd. have been emptied. Most businesses will be closed Monday and are likely to stay shut until the election results are announced. The electoral body has a deadline of no more than seven days to tally the votes.

Just a few streets over from Kibera in the leafy neighbourhood of Kilimani, a high-tech team helps to quell violence with their laptops. The volunteers and online experts of the Umati monitoring group works from a modern fourth-floor iHub office, resplendent with rows of laptops, an espresso bar and a foosball table, which has been converted into a snack table to fuel teams on a 24-hour rotation. They search Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites for hate speech and track areas where anger may be building. Umati also collates phone texts — the largest means of communication here — and the emails that come into their offices.

These findings, once verified, are then passed two floors below to the Uchaguzi group (which means “election” in Swahili), where a team creates crowdsourced maps to provide an electronic picture of hot spots.

“This is the situation room,” said Erik Hersman, a co-founder of the group that launched Uchaguzi. Sitting at the “control desk,” he described the operation as he pointed out the various hubs. “Media monitoring is over there. SMS monitoring is over there. We have translation and geolocation teams, then a reporting team, analysis and research teams up here and verification teams over there.”

If the operation runs as planned, within 10 minutes the information is gathered and processed. “That leads to our verifying people on the ground in all these locations who are trusted entities and we ask, ‘Is this happening or not?’ ”

Once verified, the information is available to the public, but also passed quickly to a variety of peace, diplomatic groups and police and intelligence agencies who can focus on stopping violence before it starts.

“This gives you an early warning signal when things are heating up,” explained Hersman.

Hersman, an American who has lived most of his life in Kenya and Sudan, co-founded his organization Ushahidi after the last election. He, like most Kenyans, is reluctant to predict what will happen Monday.

“It’s hard to prognosticate on all this. My basic thoughts are that we’ll have some flare-ups in urban slums and rural constituencies,” he said. “But I don’t expect it to be as bad.”

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.